William O. Douglas

“ Petitioner replied 'I think you are now invading freedom of the press * * *. I object to your invasion of the freedom of the press, and I also decline to answer the questions on the same grounds. You are not only attacking integrationists, you are attacking the press.'
There is nothing in the record to show that the Southern Conference or the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee or the Southern Newsletter had the remotest connection with the Communist Party. There is only the charge of the Committee that there was such a connection. That charge amounts to little more than innuendo. ”

“ History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, who innumerable times have been in the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted. ”

“ Insights into the mysteries of nature are born of hypothesis and speculation. The more so is this true in the pursuit of understanding in the groping endeavors of what are called the social sciences, the concern of which is man and society. ”

“ One would be wholly warranted in saying, I think, in light of the Watkins and Sweezy decisions that a Committee's undisclosed information or unsupported surmise would not justify an investigation into matters that on their face seemed well within the First Amendment. [7] If Watkins and Sweezy decided anything, they decided that before inroads in the First Amendment domain may be made, some demonstrable connection with communism must first be established and the matter be plainly shown to be within the scope of the Committee's authority. ”

“ State of New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 77 S.Ct. 1203, 1 L.Ed.2d 1311, decided the same day as the Watkins case, reversed a conviction arising out of a state investigation into 'subversive activities' where a teacher was asked questions concerning his relation to Marxism. The Chief Justice in his opinion stated:
'Equally manifest as a fundamental principle of a democratic society is political freedom of the individual. Our form of government is built on the premise that every citizen shall have the right to engage in political expression and association. ”

“ The problems that are the respective preoccupations of anthropology, economics, law, psychology, sociology and related areas of scholarship are merely departmentalized dealing, by way of manageable division of analysis, with interpenetrating aspects of holistic perplexities. ”